Thursday, 20 January 2011

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is the term used for when films borrow components of other films and incorporate them into their own. Many films do this nowadays and a lot of films have used the famous shower scene from Psycho.

Students who made the opening Succubus borrowed alot of elements from psycho. It followed pretty much the same pattern throughout, however it reversed the roles of the male and female. At first it looked like the women wanted to join the man by the way she sniffed his jumper, however when she then took out the knife it shocked the audience as it was unexpected and was a good tense moment. The main scene which is very similar to psycho is when she stabs him with the knife. the camera work is very much the same with alot of close up reverse reverse shots. Also they tried to mimic the music by doing sudden booms similar to psycho, and they used the same sort of knife that was used in psycho as well. It was very similar to psycho and very successful in what it was trying to do.

The Stepfather borrowed mise-en-scene from the film psycho. For example the murder scene takes place in the bathroom just like psycho however in this one she is running away from the murderer unlike in psycho.The knife is copied from psycho and so is the thrusting motion in which he tries to kill her, however in the film the murder victim is reversed as it is the women who eventually ends up killing the man. This is more of a feminist version of what would happen in psycho. A lot of the camera shots are also very similar, for example when the victim falls down into the bath and grabs the curtain, the close up on the curtain falling from the metal bar is practically identical to the close up in psycho.